


The Passing of Seasons

by misscam



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-02
Updated: 2005-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:16:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come for the entomology textbooks, stay for the invasion of privacy. Grissom and Sara and a life in the passing of seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spring

**Author's Note:**

> For Lynn, who asked for a baby, a move of OOC by Grissom and mention of a US sitcom. I've tried to give as best I can. "When the glacier sees the spring sun, he weeps" is a Norwegian proverb and is in the public domain. The book titles are all invented by yours truly.

The Passing of Seasons

II

Spring

II

What he remembered afterwards was the pattern of tiny hairs on the back of her hand, almost invisible in the flat light of the lecture hall, but rising against the touch of his skin, almost seeking him, as he shook her hand.

"Sara Sidle," she said.

"Gil Grissom," said he.

"Entomology is our friend," she repeated and her smile made the hairs on his hand stand. "Fascinating seminar, Doctor Grissom."

He echoed the smile. "Not creepy?"

"Just creeping," she replied and he could feel her mind behind her words, rising to met his too.

'All animals seek symmetry in their mates,' he thought and watched the brown in her eyes glint at him.

"Well, nice meeting you. I'll see you at the next seminar," she said after a moment and walked away, pausing after a moment to give him a half-smile over her shoulder. It occurred to him that seeing her smile and returning it already felt almost like a habit.

It was spring, and Gil Grissom wondered if it was the start of more than one thing.

II

"Grissom, what the hell is this?"

"Your assignment."

Sara Sidle annoyed was among the top five signs it would be a long night, right behind Ecklie looking for him and anyone asking to have "this bug stuff in English, please", Grissom had long since come to know. But there was something strangely reassuring about it nevertheless, familiarity in the repetition, like every winter being followed by a spring. And it was spring now, as much as it was ever spring in Las Vegas and the desert.

"I thought I was working with Greg on our hit-and-run?"

"You were. Now you're working with me on the overdose in the desert," he calmly replied.

"I thought that was just that - an overdose."

The light of the hallway and the shadows from his office were battling each other across her as she stood in the doorway and he could only vaguely make out the furrowed lines across her brow as she considered her own words.

"It's no longer just an overdose, is it?"

"No," he said cheerfully, and she smiled, the shadows on her lips fleeing as she stepped in. "Tox screen came back. Not enough amount to have killed him."

"So what did kill him?"

"Homo sapiens with with an object heavius. One hit to the head."

She nodded, following his thoughts. "First hit's free, as we both know. No blood."

"No blood," he agreed. "But the mark was clearly visible when the hair was shaved off."

"And you need my help."

"Yes," he said, and it was a lie and a truth both, as it had always been. "We're going back to the scene, see if we can locate the object heavius."

"A Latin dictionary?" she suggested and her smile was almost the past returned.

She followed him as they walked through the hallways, steps in sync almost by a will of their own. Always seeking the symmetry, the pattern, the dance. A habit, perhaps, born out of repetition as habits were. There were days he wondered just how many habits a human could have, but habits were never really noticed until broken and thus were hard to count.

It hadn't stopped him trying to make a catalogue in his head.

They drove to the crime scene mainly in silence; Sara looking over the photos of the head wound, him looking at the road and road lights keeping a line of light in the darkening day. Spring nights were still chilly, but warmth was starting to creep into them from the warmer days. Not that the desert yielded too much change from one season to another. Dust rose and fell in the winter and summer sun alike.

He sometimes missed the clear passing of seasons, the illusion of change through the habits of the Earth. Spring to summer to autumn to winter to spring. Moving forward but never moving away.

"Do you think the body was dumped in the desert?" Sara asked after a moment, eyes still on the black and white of words on a page.

"No. No sign of car tracks. Foot prints, but normal prints and not indicating a heavy weight being carried. I think it's our crime scene."

"Mmmm," she said non-committingly. "The killer could have taken the object with him, though."

"Yeah."

She threw a sideways look at him, then lightly shook her head. At just what, he didn't know. At times, he caught himself wanting to ask, but he always steered back, knowing it would give her the right to ask him back. And he didn't want to lie and feared to speak the truth.

"You're not taking me out in the desert on some wild object heavius chase here?"

"Would I?"

"Yes. I know you, Grissom."

He said nothing, merely watched the dust twirl up around the car as he drove it up to the yellow tape glinting in the fading sun. Know was a dangerous word. He knew bugs and used it to bring justice. What would Sara use knowing Grissom to?

Perhaps he already knew.

He had already looked over much of the scene, but with the purpose slightly changed the scene revealed new possibilities. Rocks in all shapes littered across the dust, one of which might have been used to end a life.

"What do you think of this one?" Sara called after a few minutes, carefully holding up a photo to a rock the size of his palm.

"Could fit," he agreed. "Bag it."

"Rocks aren't much use for fingerprints."

"But blood is good for DNA," he pointed out, pointing to the small red smear. "Looks like blood to me."

"No blood from the victim... Blood from the killer?" she suggested. "Cut himself on the murder weapon? I wish all cases could be as easy as that."

"You have no sense of fun."

"Grissom, the last experiment of yours had my hair smelling for a week!"

He grinned. "I thought bacon grease was a very becoming smell on you."

"Tell that to the dogs who wanted to lick me."

He paused. Tongue on Sara's skin, tasting... No. Best to kill that mental image right away.

"Grissom?"

"Sorry. Lost in grease there for a moment."

"You're odd," she said, but there was affection in her voice as she followed him back to the car, darkness creeping in across the desert.

"So are you," he replied, letting a truth out in for a moment in the dust as it rose and fell, rose and fell and answered the wind.

Symmetry.

II

There was something changing around him. Not just the lab, with Warrick married, Catherine sharing duties with him, Nick rebelling and Greg growing less Greg and more CSI Sanders. Not just the season, with the sun growing warmer and the wind milder. Not just the country, fear and the desire for safety driving changes that soon seemed they had always been so.

The symmetry was changing.

"Who would get drugged up in the middle of the desert?" Sara muttered, shaking her head as she leaned against the hallway wall, watching Brass lead away Fred Jennings.

"What seems odd to us makes perfect sense to others," he replied. "Tilt the glass and the image changes."

"Voltaire?"

"My mother."

She didn't look surprised at these little revelations anymore, but her lips did still curve in a faint smile. "Fred Jennings will have a lot of time to try that out. Killing his roommate over unevenly sharing their drugs... Never ceases to amaze me what people will kill each other over."

"Good."

"What?"

"If it ceased to amaze you, not sure this job would be right for you anymore."

"If it ever was," she said softly.

"You are a good CSI, you know," he said clumsily.

She laughed, and the laugh was bitter. "You sure kept that well hidden. Nick, Greg, Warrick... You've encouraged them. Why not me?"

"Because the encouragement might not only be professional encouragement."

"Because I'd take it as something more, you mean."

"No. Because it might be something more."

She looked at him and very slowly, the disbelief faded from the brown in her eyes.

There was something changing around him and it was him.

II

Spring sun and changes and Sara in his house, staring incredulously at his bookshelf. Come for the entomology textbooks, stay for the invasion of privacy.

And yet, he had been preparing for it for weeks.

"Desirous Moors? Silver Moon Seduction? Grissom, what the hell are these?"

"Romance novels," he replied calmly, crossing his arms.

"You read romance novels? All right, who are you, how did Ecklie hire you and how much is Grissom being held for?"

"I read romance novels. My habit number eighty-six."

"You number your habits and read romance novels. Now, the first part doesn't really surprise me, Doctor Grissom, but number two..." She shook her head, but couldn't hide the amusement in her voice. "Care to enlighten me as to why?"

"My mother used to read them before my father left. Before... They make me remember."

She didn't laugh at him, didn't scoff, didn't pretend it hadn't been said.

"Sometimes," she said distantly, past in her eyes, "my father would let me rest my head in my lap and I felt safe, as I never did the rest of the time. Sometimes, I still pretend my pillow is a lap."

There was a million ways he'd pictured a first kiss, a million different fantasies. None had her pressed against Scandalous Satisfaction, none of them had the spring sun blinding him, none of them had her lips tasting still of onions from the breakfast he'd treated her to.

None of them had been real.

"I suspect this is research for The Ecstasy of the Eccentric Entomologist," she whispered and he laughed and kissed her again, because once you were invaded, you might as well take whatever pleasure out of surrender you could.

II

Kiss #1: In his house at noon a Tuesday, pressing her against a bookshelf, spring sun against his back.

Kiss #2: On his stairs sometime past noon Tuesday, his fingers in her hair, the memory of the first still on her lips.

Kiss #3: Thursday, the desert, dust in his eyes, work waiting, darkness embracing them.

Kiss #4: Saturday, leaving faint lipstick on his lips at the end of a date, or whatever the hell he could call taking her to see rare skeletons in flat light.

Kiss #5: Monday morning, a cricket in her hair he meant to remove and with the lips of hers he was finding it hard to.

II

"When the glacier sees the spring sun, he weeps," Greg had said once, watching ice melt. Words of Papa Olaf again, another proverb taken across the sea from a land where winter held a visible grip. Familiarity to cling to in the unfamiliar, the lifelines all humans created.

Grissom had wondered if he'd clung onto his for too long and forgotten how to swim.

"Grissom?"

"Yes?"

"What have these years been?"

She looked up at him as he traced the sides of her neck carefully, her head warm in his lap. Her skin was unfamiliar to his still, but he was learning the feel of it.

"Foreplay."

"You call hurt, rejection and insecurities foreplay?"

"A relationship is hurt, rejection and insecurity," he replied. "Yes, I call it foreplay."

He had kissed her five times now and she had a right to ask these questions. He still had to fight the urge to flee from them.

"You have a seriously depressing view of relationships."

He shrugged. "Parents."

"Parents too," she said softly. "Do you think it's possible to unlearn what your parents teach you?"

"I don't know. We'll have to conduct an experiment."

She closed her eyes and he let his drift to the horizon. Spring sun and the glacier weeping for the silence and peace lost with winter's passing. There was always something lost in the change, as there had to be or all would stay the same.

Time to lose something.

"You're my habit one hundred and eighteen," he whispered, "the one I don't want to break."

When he looked at her, he saw her eyes open and focus on him, the smile an echo of the first she had ever given him.

"Good."

It was spring and everything was beginning.


	2. Summer

The Passing of Seasons

II

Summer

II

Bugs could live a lifetime in a summer, the heat the frames of their life. Maturing and mating in a life in micro before the cold crawled in with the wind.

At eight, he found a dead butterfly during a summer at his aunt's, the leaves falling in the wind as tears of the trees. He hadn't cried, merely watched it until the light faded and an abrupt wind tossed leaves and the dead alike further down the road. Even then, he had found it beautiful. It lived for what it was meant for, no more and no less.

A lifetime in a summer.

At eight, Gil Grissom knew envy.

II

"When are we going to sleep together?"

She stood in the heat and it wavered around her, like a firestorm spreading out from her. Strands of her hair clung to her face and the sun clung to her, seeking the brightness in her eyes. Her lips were curved in that faint smile she seemed to give to him these days, the smile that filled him with equal parts pride and fear.

"Sara..."

"Simple question, Grissom."

But nothing was ever simple with her. The years had made it complicated, he had made it complicated, her past had made it complicated.

"I'm not sure," he said, wondering why they were having this conversation now in the raging sun, halfway between the shades of his house and his car.

"What do you need to be sure of?"

She was growing bolder with her questions, as if each time he touched her she grew in determination. Each time he touched her, he grew more accustomed to liking it. Soon, it will almost be a habit. Still he was holding back. Old habits didn't give in to new without a fight.

"That I can stop snoring?" he suggested.

For a moment, her face was merely a mask, telling him nothing. "You'll have to practice, then. Or I will have to buy earplugs."

Then she smiled, and the smile was a threat and a promise both.

At fifty, Gil Grissom knew anticipation.

II

The heat went where the light did and battled the air conditioning and shades of the city for domination. It was summer in Las Vegas and people seemed too weighed down with heat even to commit murders. And so, the lab was unusually quiet, people working on old cases under the hissing of fans. Hush inside, roar outside.

And Sara Sidle trying to seduce him.

Oh, it wasn't perhaps seduction in the normal, accepted way. It was seduction in the Sara way, especially crafted for Grissom madness. A little smile across yellow tape, a little breath in his air as she stood much too close, a little touch just walking by. A little temptation in her eyes.

He wasn't sure anyone at work could tell. She was efficient, dedicated and the only real difference was that she now read entomology books and romance novels alike in the breakroom. Every time he saw her huddled over, eyes on a page, he knew she had taken them from his shelves. She was pushing into his life, quietly, but he couldn't stop her anymore than he could stop the sun.

And like the insects of summer, he lived in it.

He returned the smiles across yellow tape, mingled his breath with hers as she stood much too close, returned the touched when she walked by. And he could see the mirror of his eyes in the mirror of hers.

He drove her home after work, sometimes, kissing her on the steps of her home, sun framing them. And one day, he didn't break it off, didn't pull away and drive home. Every summer came to a mate. This was his.

The fans were cool in his bedroom, but her skin was not. He could feel the pulse in her neck, the bones in her shoulders, the lines on her palms, the weight of her breasts, the warmth all over her. All his to catalogue by fingertips. Skin to skin. There was symmetry in that.

She closed her eyes and laced her fingers in his hair when they came together, but he kept his eyes open, watching her face, the strands of hair clinging to her blazing face. Perhaps he merely wanted to burn the vision into memory. Perhaps he wanted control still.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, the words beating with his heart, with his body's rhythm.

She exhaled his name, and he was lost.

II

"When I was ten, I tried to live in silence, like my mum," he told her, resting his head against her shoulder and his body against hers. "But there was always a noise that made me forget I shouldn't hear. A wind I would listen to and wonder how could push the clouds, a dog's bark in a language I couldn't speak, a fly buzzing in summer."

"And your mum?"

"She just smiled. She knew you can't let go of a sense by will."

"Yeah."

The air conditioning rattled and coughed before pushing heat back again, a wall of air against the blanket of heat.

"When I was five, I wished I couldn't see," Sara said, eyes closed. "If I couldn't see, I wouldn't know and it wouldn't really have happened. I tried to glue my eyelids shut. My mom told me I was silly. Then dad found out and they fought."

He didn't say anything because there was nothing to say that wouldn't sound trite, degrading or poor in the face of her words. He just took her hand and watched their fingers lace and somehow, it felt almost more intimate than anything else he'd done.

Pain, memories and skin in her hand, and he was taking it all.

"Why did we do this now?" she whispered, breath ragged in the heat. "What changed?"

"You."

"I changed?"

"You're stronger. I needed you to be stronger, to see in me something beyond your habit of falling for emotional unavailable men."

"Why?"

"Because I want it to last."

II

Monday: Her place, her invitation, her eyes like a fire and he a moth,

Tuesday: A dead child, a murdering parent, and Sara's tears never cried like pain in his skin that even her kisses cannot remove.

Wednesday: Dinner, his place. Sex, his bed. Dreams, dead butterflies and dead children.

Thursday: His car and silence, driving to another scene, her sleeping breath a habit and her tanning skin still warm.

Friday: His place, his invitation, his fumbled attempts at seduction with a new forensics paper she had been waiting for, and the paper falling to the floor forgotten,

Saturday: Never leaving home, like a beetle guarding a treasure.

Sunday: His place, no invitation, she coming anyway and he forgetting he hadn't asked her all the day till night.

This had to be love. He knew no other word for it.

II

"Grissom?"

"Yes?"

"Why do I still call you Grissom?"

"Because you always have? Habits are powerful."

"You'd know."

"Yes."

"Does it bug you?"

"No. My name doesn't define what I am to you."

"What does, then?"

"That I'm here."

II

In the morning, he had started to wake up just five minutes before the alarm clock, five minutes before her. It was enough time to get used to her being there, fight off the panic and shell of old Grissom and find control, or at least an illusion of.

In the morning, he had started to kiss her awake, kiss the remains of dreams from her lips because it was the only thing he could do. The night was memory's and past's, but the morning was summer and theirs.

In the morning, he has started to whisper what he hadn't dared in sun's full glare yet. Little words, no little meaning. Meaning that can trap him, give her power, give her a hold on him. And still he whispered them and she whispered them back.

In the morning, before the heat assaulted them, was the silence he'd never found as ten and never sought since, even feared. Just not absence of sound, but silence, the feel of it filling his mind. Silence was not no sounds. Silence was in spite of the sounds, in spite of summer's roar. Silence was life.

In the morning, Sara had started getting sick.

II

"I'm pregnant."

It was a shock wholly expected. He'd seen the signs, labelled them, numbered them, and still the words robbed his breath away.

"Grissom?"

"You're sure?" he asked, even as he knew he was.

"Yes. Doctor confirmed. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

She sat down on the stairs to his house, and he sat down next to her, watching the sun blaze down on them, but already losing intensity slowly and surely to the pass of seasons. Summer was never forever, even if one could live a lifetime in it.

"I could leave the lab," she offered.

"No. I'll talk to Ecklie, maybe Catherine or Warrick could be your supervisor."

"Or I could supervise myself."

"Maybe."

She nodded, the sun catching the shine in her hair, making her almost seem of light.

"Are you unhappy about this?"

"No. I'm..." He hesitated, one last second of another Grissom, another time.

"Scared?"

"Yes."

"So am I. Think we can be parents at all?"

"I don't know. We'll have to conduct an experiment."

She laughed and he laughed and he thought maybe, maybe this would be all right after all.

II

He cleared a bookshelf of entomology books and bought pregnancy books, childcare books, children's books, children's entomology books. As the shelf filled, he could feel something like panic grow too. He hadn't planned this. He couldn't control this. He could be like his father after all, and the child could be like him.

And he knew Sara would fear the same, that they would be her parents and the child would be her. At night, she had started to whisper of her fears, and he would nod and let her know they echoed in him without words.

'Courage is not in having no fears,' his mother had told him at fifteen and he hadn't understood. 'Courage is in having fears and still going on.'

He went on. More books, more talks with Ecklie, more doctor's appointments, more changes. Summer was ending and bugs were starting to die, having lived for what they was meant for, no more and no less.

He still envied them. But maybe, just maybe, he also pitied.

At fifty, Gil Grissom thought he understood.

Summer was ending and his life was not.


	3. Autumn

The Passing of Seasons

II

Autumn

II

There were some things Gil Grissom wouldn't tell his mother.

Not of his first kiss, fumbled and sticky and awkward with ice cream on his chin and young Jessica on his lips. Not of his 'D' in one biology test, the shame of it hot and burning, like a swallowed flame. Not of his little grasshopper under the bed that died in winter and left him grieving until he discovered he could study it even dead.

And not of the longing somewhere inside him for her voice to sing a lullaby, passing him from awake to sleep in the safety of her voice.

After a while, he made his own safety, but he didn't forget.

II

Wind against the window, tapping, tapping, tapping, a relentless force, a lullaby for summer, a vessel for autumn. The heat was already fading, the sun growing more distant every day. No shedding of leaves in the desert, but shedding of the sun burning still.

"Grissom?"

"Yeah?"

"Something moved."

He turned to the other body in his bed, the skin he'd grown used to waking up clinging to. Sara. Sara Sidle plus one, in his home.

Quietly, he put his hand on her stomach, knowing it was a little early to feel the baby move yet, but wanting still to share the illusion. It would be real soon enough.

"I'm being silly again, aren't I?" she asked, and he laced his hand in hers.

"Yes."

"Don't feel like you have to shield my feelings, or anything."

"I never much did, did I?"

"No."

The little words always hurt the most, he knew. They carried the truth, but between the two there had to be truth and pain, or it never did last. Maybe that was why he had been afraid, was afraid. Seek safety in solitude and there was no pain.

And no bonds of pain to make you feel alive.

"I can't promise to change," he whispered, one hand in hers, one hand on the life inside her. One hand on life, ever so fragile.

"I know. I'm here anyway."

II

Like wind, the rumours swept through the crime lab. He knew what they said. He could read them in people's gazes and silences. Sara Sidle had moved to dayshift. Gil Grissom was taking on more teaching. Catherine Willows was taking on more supervising. Ecklie was looking sour. Two plus two equalled the inevitable.

Sara Sidle had gotten what he wanted, the rumours whispered.

And he could tell it was troubling her from the way she bit her lip ever so slightly, the slight shadow in her eyes. He couldn't change time. He couldn't turn the wind.

"I'm sorry," he told her one day, passing her in the hallway.

"I didn't ask you to be!" she snapped at him and walked away. He was left staring until he felt Catherine pat him on the arm.

"She still doesn't want your pity, Grissom."

He still had a lot of Sara to learn, he realised. And somehow, it didn't seem life a lifetime would be enough.

II

"There's a difference between pity and compassion, Sara."

"Sometimes, that's only in a dictionary."

"Sometimes, it's not only. Not with me."

"I know. You can live your life like a textbook, frame your life with definitions."

"Does it bug you?"

"No. But sometimes it will hurt me. Doesn't mean I'll leave."

'Good', he didn't say. 'Because I can't let you go.'

"I know," she said, eyes his face and he knew, finally knew she did love him, did understand him. "You never could."

"No."

II

There were little changes everywhere. Slowly, her colours were starting to creep into his home, like the changes of leaves in a distant autumn of childhood. A blue toothbrush in his bathroom. A yellow-covered book on his coffee table. A black bra in his drawer. A red shoe in his hallway, seeking a mate.

It was becoming a home of two. Nowhere to hide from the storm now, nothing to do but weather the changes.

He cleared out drawers for her, got new toothpaste, removed his baseball books from the coffee table and spent half an hour trying to find her other shoe until she almost stumped over him in the hallway, trying to find the mate of the brown shoe under his bed.

When he pressed her against the wall and kissed her, the shoes were left mismatched together on the floor and somehow, that was right too.

II

Month two: Twenty sleep-overs, seventeen mornings of Sara sick, five shoutings by Ecklie. Five hundred and six moments of panic. He couldn't be a father.

Month three: Twenty-four sleep-overs, twelve mornings of Sara sick, four shoutings by Ecklie. Eighteen nights spent reading while she slept. He could be a father.

Month four: Twenty-seven sleep-overs, no Sara sick, six shoutings by Ecklie. One shouting by him and a silent lab afterwards. Twenty nights spent reading, one to her.

Month five: Running out of books, going for DVDs. Three hundred and twelve moments of panic. Ecklie silent. Sara snoring, the wind howling and he awake in the dark of night, trying to remember the words to a lullaby.

II

Cold bed and cold night, and waking up alone, just like Gil Grissom would normally do, except this time, it was no longer normal.

He found her sitting in the living room, television blaring quietly, her feet tucked in under her, a pillow against her stomach, almost as if she was shielding the life inside her from the noise. Sara the protector. She had never told him the whole story of her childhood, but he knew the protection she should have had, hadn't been. And now she tried to protect the world by catching killers and analyzing fibres, as if to give what she hadn't had.

"I Love Lucy," he said softly, and she nodded without looking up at him.

"My mother liked it," she said after a moment, and he sat down on the couch beside her, watching the light of the television flicker against her hair.

"How did young Sara feel about it?"

"Young Sara hated it," she said with venom.

This time, he just nodded, and after a moment, she leaned slightly against him, her breaths echoing his heartbeat.

"How about we watch something else, then?" he asked, feeling her body slowly warm his, just as his would warm her, nature's little way of making it warmer with two. Survival in two. The essence of life and the proof of it, resting within her skin.

"Discovery channel?" she suggested. "Maybe they have bug hour. One hour of beetles and butterflies, especially crafted to entertain insomniac entomologists."

"Perhaps," he said, smiling faintly. "What do you want to watch?"

"Anything but The Long, Detailed Pain of Childbirth for the 118th time."

"It's educational."

"It's possible to have entirely too much education, Grissom."

"Habit of a lifetime."

"Like watching I Love Lucy for over twenty years in the hopes that it'll make you understand your own mother."

"Yeah," he said softly and kissed her. "Like that."

In the end, they watched Travel Channel and people hunting for ghosts in old ruins, looking in all the wrong places. The ghosts resided in skin, not in stone, within the living, his mother and father within him, her mother and father within Sara. Here be ghosts.

That didn't mean they had to rule.

II

Month six: Seven doctor's appointments, seventy-seven curses building a nursery, a hundred minutes of trying to find the DVDs Sara had hidden

Month seven: Six fights, three his fault, three hers, none of them making her leave. Three hundred suggested baby names and none agreed on.

Month eight: Running out of DVDs.

Month nine: Help.

II

Screams and pushing and her hand in his, clutching him so hard it had to leave marks on his bones, forever proof Sara Sidle had been there, until bones came to dust. One childbirth, and he couldn't remember a single thing from the books or the videos or the checklist he'd made. All he could remember was to hold onto her hand until it felt like he was clutching her.

And a voice, a voice he couldn't even remember the name of, saying something that didn't make sense.

"You have a son."

For a moment of panic, he could only stare at this unfamiliar face, this intrusion in his life. Son.

And the son opened his eyes and it was Sara's eyes and suddenly, English was coming back to him. He had a son. They had a son.

"Oh," he said, because there were no words that could do it justice, even knowing the whole dictionary. "Oh."

II

Wind against the window, tapping, tapping, tapping, a relentless force, awaking him and for a moment, he thought it a child's cry. But the baby was sleeping, Sara was sleeping and the tears were still of the future.

He got up anyway, and knelt by the cradle, watching the baby sleep.

There would be some many things he wouldn't be able to do for this child, this son of his. Not protection, not forever, because that wasn't what life was about. Not enough time, because he would still get lost in work and his own life. Not great words of advice on other people, because that had never been him.

But he could give one thing.

"When you need it," he whispered, the words as much to himself as the child, "I'll sing you lullabies."

He went back to bed, back to her skin next to his, back to the warmth of two. And outside, the wind sang on, a lullaby to the Earth and everyone, carrying the night to day in the safety of its voice and Gil Grissom finally to sleep.


	4. Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lullaby lyrics have been changed by yours truly and aren't real lullabies, just reflecting them.

The Passing of Seasons

II

Winter

II

When he was eighty-seven, Gil Grissom knew he was about to die.

It wasn't a vision, not a doctor's statement, not a choice, not a sudden pain to hail death's coming. It was merely a growing feeling as he lay still in bed, feeling the pulse beat in his wrists, faded drums of life. He was dying.

The winds went through him, the cold never left. Winter then, in mind and body. He was old now, bones brittle and skin worn. It was time to fall quiet.

Oh, but it had been such a wonderful roar, he thought and smiled to no one but the air.

A wonderful roar of life.

II

Year fifty-one:  
"Lavender's blue, dilly dilly / Lavender's glad / When you are child, dilly dilly / I shall be dad..."

II

He stood in the door and held his breath, or maybe his breath held him, time still as a winter's night between exhale and inhale. Pause and marvel. Pause and see Sara Sidle lay still in bed, forehead to forehead with Sean Sidle Grissom, little fingers clutching brown hair.

"Hello, Sean," she whispered seriously. "I haven't done this before. Neither have you. I guess that makes us even."

There was a silence for a moment, morning sun slating across the bed, falling on skin and cloth alike. He could see Sara's naked feet, pale white in pale light, and he could already feel how it would be to rub them warm in his hand.

"I'm sorry I don't have a family to give you," she went on and the grief in her voice was naked and still. "We'll have to make the best of it, you and I."

"And Grissom," he said quietly, walking over. She looked up at him without changing position, gaze serious and direct. No hiding, his Sara. She had learned as very young that it did no good.

Life never did any easy lessons.

"And Grissom," she agreed. "But you can call him daddy. Only mommy calls him Grissom."

He smiled faintly, crawling in behind her, taking a few strands of hair in between his finger, mirroring the child. "Only mommy can make the name sound beautiful."

"Since when have you been interested in beauty?" she replied, a hint of mischief in her voice as she leaned against him. Her back was warm against his chest, a summer's touch in everything else winter.

"Since I met you both," he said. "Hello, Sean."

Pause and marvel. Pause and see a family, he thought and remembered to breathe.

II

Year fifty-two:

"The itsy-bitsy spider / Climbed up the child's arm / Down came happy daddy / and marvelled at it all..."

II

He was kissing her, stroking her skin, feeling her heart under his palm when he heard an all too familiar sound. Shrill and loud and demanding.

"I'll go," he whispered, distangling himself from Sara, who feel back against the pillows with a sigh. He could see her close his eyes as he headed for the cradle, amazed at just how much noise something so small still could make. Enough to deny sleep to two very tired crime scene investigators on a frequent basis.

And strange how it was still impossible not to feel the moment of awe as little Sean looked at him with eyes just like Sara's. For that alone, he loved the child. And then there was everything else.

"Hey," he said softly and Sean stopped crying, blinking up at him in the sudden hush.

Maybe he was getting the hang of this father thing after all.

When he came back to Sara a little later, she was smiling.

"Gil Grissom, father extraordinaire. Never thought I'd see it."

"Me neither."

"We've been okay, haven't we?" she asked, lacing her hand in his as he lowered himself down to her, feeling her skin welcome his.

"We've been okay," he agreed and kissed her slowly, keep his eyes on hers.

For all the fear, little moments of panic, fights, insecurities, ghosts and pain they'd been okay. They were okay.

And then, with the wonderful sense of timing both parents claimed was inherited by the other, Sean started crying again.

"Shit."

II

Year fifty-five:  
"Hush, little baby, don't say a word / Papa's gonna buy you a butterfly..."

II

It was so white, the hospital. So very white, innocence and winter and death in a colour. So very, very white.

"I'm sorry, Mister Grissom," a voice was saying, and he could hear Catherine cry against Warrick's chest, see Nick slam his fist against the wall, see Greg stand still, so very still. And Sara, Sara with eyes of tears, walking towards him.

"I couldn't save him..." she whispered and they fell against each other, her body still so soft. "I swear I tried, Grissom."

"I know," he whispered and somewhere inside him, he was hating himself for being glad it was her body alive next to his and Brass's dead on a table somewhere deep within the white. "I love you. I know you tried. I love you."

Bullets knew no distinction of flesh, but he did.

II

It was hard to forgive life when confronted by death, he thought. Brass knew that, as all police officers did. Grissom had been hoping to avoid the knowledge.

He was still drinking when Sean walked into the living room, looking downcast.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you, Sean," he muttered, feeling the alcohol taste bitter in his mouth. "I lost a friend this week. I wasn't angry with you."

"It's okay, daddy," Sean whispered. "I'm sorry I broke your butterfly. I'll get you a new one. I will. I'm sorry."

There are some things that can't be replaced, Grissom didn't say. Too much innocence to learn that lesson yet.

"I'm too," he said instead, putting away his drink. "Let's see if we can find one in this book we both like, and then we'll get it together."

There was a sort of comfort in life when surrounded by death, he thought.

II

Year sixty:  
"Twinkle, twinkle, little star / how I learned what you are / Out in space so far / daddy's shown me on Discovery..."

II

"You're gonna have to talk to Sean," Sara said and Grissom knew that tone. It held the stern gaze of his own mother, the disapproval of his teacher and the faint amusement of Sara Sidle. It was a tone that seemed to come for a visit more and more often.

"What did he do?"

"Your son dug up the neighbour's dead cat for a science project."

"Our son is a very dedicated scientist," he countered and she gave him a withering stare. "It's your genes too."

"Don't remind me."

He only smiled. At ten, it was hard to deny Sean was very much the son of Sara Sidle. And, he supposed, of Gil Grissom too.

"Can't deny it. Follow the evidence," he said instead and kissed her, feeling her smile into the kiss. "I'll talk to him."

II

"Sean."

"Dad."

"Your mother is not too happy you dug up the neighbour's cat."

"I know. She said I'm grounded."

"Yes."

"It's okay. I have a new experiment I can do inside. Look, I got this battery from the garage!"

"You're trying to electrocute a pickle."

"Yeah! Just like you told me. Did I set it up right?"

"Yes. Just like I taught you."

When Sara later found her pickle missing from her lunch, she grounded them both.

II

Year seventy:  
"Swing low, sweet chariot / Comin' for to carry her home / Swing low, sweet chariot / Comin' for to bury her down..."

II

Afterwards, he wondered why he hadn't felt it the moment he died, why he hadn't woken up from his sleep knowing half of him was gone, half of him had died with her. It seemed like he should have known, should have felt it in his mind, not having to hear it from his son's lips and refuse to believe.

"She's gone, dad," Sean repeated. "Died at the scene."

Sara Sidle, late from work again. She still worked too much. He'd told her that many times. She was getting old. They were both getting old. She shouldn't work so hard. They should retire, be old and annoying together and finally write that brilliant forensics textbook.

But there was always another dead. She always worked too hard.

She wouldn't work so hard anymore.

She was gone.

Gone.

Her car plus speeding other car equalled gone.

"I know," he said to his son and then, then he did feel it. "I know."

II

It had been a beautiful funeral. Catherine and Warrick had been there, Nick had flown in from texas, Greg had held an eulogy on behalf of the lab, looking tired in his new supervising shadow. Never an easy act to follow, Sara Sidle. Never easy at all.

He hadn't cried during the service, during the fumbled speeches, at the sight of the coffin, at the sight of Sean's tear-streaked face. He'd just been there, wondering if he could feel at all with everything he'd been buried next to her.

Sara Sidle. Not his first love, not his only love. Perhaps not even the last, because he wasn't dead yet and the heart could betray even grief. But she had been... Oh, she had been so Sara and he had loved her.

He still loved her and she was gone.

There weren't enough tears for that in the whole world and so, he didn't cry.

He stood by the grave until the sun crawled beneath the horizon, so used to sleeping next to her he almost thought about resting against the gravestone, the earth the same bed as for her. It shouldn't have been her. He was older, it should have been him. It should always have been him.

"I'm sorry, Sara," he said and maybe he did cry after all, but he couldn't feel it, couldn't feel anything but a raw, gaping hole in him that let the cold through. It wouldn't be warm ever again, not even in the blazing heat of summer. It wouldn't be life ever again, just a passing of days.

"I'm going to miss you," he said.

Then he went home. Because she wouldn't have stood for anything else.

II

Year eighty-seven:  
"Rock-a-bye Grissom / in the earth's hold / When the wind blows / you won't feel cold  
When the seasons pass / death stays a wall / and quiet rests Gil Grissom / memories and all..."

II

At eighty-seven, Gil Grissom knew the hush.

II

FIN


End file.
